Posted by ' seems to me... on July 05, 2003 at 00:30:31:
In Reply to: from NY Times RE:Orch Survival posted by LV on July 04, 2003 at 07:58:53:
that playing in a symphony orchestra historically has been a tenuous blue collar job.
Someone recently pointed out to me the neighborhood where Arnold Jacobs' home was located in Chicago...
admittedly one who was greatly influenced by the Great Depression and who lived very cautiously later in his life, but still...
If just a few orchestras (primarily in the United States) have managed to pay one notch above blue collar wages for a decade or two - and a several of these higher-echelon orchestras have squandered their endowments (through the incompetent hiring of incompetent managers, etc.) and a few other still-blue-collar orchestras have folded, isn't this about what one would expect?
This business is not a cakewalk, and it takes extremely bright, creative, energetic, and dedicated people to keep these organizations afloat. These are not the type of people who are generally attracted to the profession of symphony orchestra administration.